There's a boondoggle of catastrophic proportion unfolding in Dover, but this time our Teflon governor can't use a cabinet secretary as his human flak jacket.

What began as a seemingly innocuous $14 million state-of-the- art emergency radio network is now a $50 million and counting mess. Don't be surprised if more than $100 million in tax money is spent before it's over.

Not since the Farmers Bank debacle in the mid-1970s has the state government gotten itself in a bigger financial squeeze through sheer negligence. And not in recent memory have more state officials collectively contributed.

From Gov. Carper's Executive Department to the General Assembly, a new player emerges on an almost daily basis.

The latest involves the Office of Attorney General, which has the state on record with the Federal Communications Commission as an admitted law breaker. That's because the FCC wasn't paying attention. Expect one or more of our congressional delegation to enter stage right any day now.

Meanwhile, to the extent we're willing to accept the word of those involved, no one has died because public safety providers couldn't talk to each other inside a building -- or for that matter across the street -- on their nifty $3,300 Motorola 800 megahertz digital radios.

You know the story by now, or should since they've been touting the potential virtues of this radio system for 10-plus years: statewide radio communications among police, fire and paramedics to provide the finest cooperative public safety interconnection known to man; ugly transmission towers in back yards to make it work. Except they don't.

Consider this. Baltimore, which recently installed an 800 megahertz system, has 10 towers for its 90 square miles. Delaware has 10 towers for 2,000 square miles. You do the math.

When Delaware's system was turned on two years ago, it didn't work in four statewide locations, from Rehoboth Beach to Claymont. It doesn't work, period, inside homes, office buildings, prisons, police stations or burning high-rises.

No sweat, Carper's office says; nobody wanted these high-tech radios to work indoors so paramedics or cops could call for assistance. Oh.

But more money -- lots and lots of it -- will fix that, give or take another 10 years.

That's assuming the FCC doesn't grant Maryland the injunction it seeks against Delaware for illegally broadcasting its 800 megahertz transmissions into the counties of Cecil, Harford, Baltimore, Anne Arundel, the entire Eastern Shore and parts of Accomack County, Va.

As you've probably guessed, the willful transmission of one's radio signal static into the receiver of a fire company 50 miles away in another state is not good practice. It's also against federal law.

But it seems Delaware's crack team of radio communication wonks were a couple rungs short on the ladder. When Maryland's FCC officials first filed for the injunction motion three years ago, Attorney General Jane Brady's office acknowledged the law might have been broken but that was OK because Delaware can fix the problem later.

The pending motion to shut down some of Delaware's frequencies was amended last week.

Now the Maryland FCC regional officials have discovered three new frequency modifications that Delaware made last April were not submitted for the required inter-regional review before going to the full FCC in Washington on Aug. 10.

Of course, the FCC being the 800-pound federal gorilla it is, it approved Delaware's request without checking if proper procedure was followed. But then the FCC assumes that state governments would do it right.

Stay tuned.

-- Ron Williams is assistant editor of the editorial pages.
Send e-mail to rwilliam@wilmingt.gannett.com